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@this-is-not-an-alien

Ophelia

“No problem! I can change my dreams!!” The boy blurted. He had a sheepish, awkward grin.

He tilted his head like an inquisitive bird and added,

“Well…I can change where I go in dreams like when dreams have like this plotted out path you’re supposed to go but I can go anywhere I want!! But if I try to change too much I wake up… I’m Ehud!” He said, practically all in one breath.

He shook my hand, I was pretty sure there was some kind of grease on his, but I didn’t particularly care. I smiled back. I couldn’t help liking him, he wasn’t prim and judgemental like Cal. She scared me a little. Okay, more than a little. She made me feel as though I was constantly doing something wrong.

“What’d you say your name was again?” he asked, sheepishly.

I grinned. I knew that feeling when you missed someone’s name the first time and was then too scared to ask again.

“Ophelia,” I replied.

“Oh like Shakespeare?!” Ehud said, delighted with his own memory.

I clasped my hands and grinned so wide it hurt.

“Exactly! I rather like the other Ophelia, or at least, I like her role! I’d love to play it one day if there was ever a ballet. She went mad and drowned herself, that must be delightful to play,” I said, with a dramatic sweep of my hand.

Ehud was grinning and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

My smile faltered. I had seen parts of the play and I knew the story, but I’d never finished reading Hamlet.

I’d tried, but in class, my already barely passing grades had plummeted. I just couldn’t get through it, no matter how much I wanted to. When there were pages upon pages of complicated language I had to wrestle through, I took so much longer than everyone else. And when the tests came I couldn’t remember enough of it, and I’d forgotten to turn in my essay on time. It hadn’t even been good.

I should have done better. I should have tried harder. Nobody else thought it was hard, why did I?

I plastered the smile back on my face. I didn’t want Ehud to think I wasn’t happy I had met him. I was, it wasn’t quite as lonely anymore.

“Hey, Cloud-cuckoo-landers, move!” Cal yelled at us. (I discovered that phrase as a way to describe characters who are in their own world and I love it so much XD)

I looked up, then drew back, hurriedly. The insects were eating through the door and crawling beneath it.

“Move where?” I asked, trying to catch up to what was happening.

“The tunnel entrance,” Cal snapped at me, the conviction that I was incredibly stupid dripping off every word.

I spun around and started in one direction. I had no idea what tunnel entrance she meant but I couldn’t afford to look even sillier.

Ehud grabbed my arm and pulled me along, in a different direction. I was starting to feel like a rag doll.

He pulled me into the dimness of a tunnel, where the others must have gone ahead. Maybe we would be able to escape the insects here.

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@anyone take it from here! Idk what they find in the tunnel, but I thought it might be fun to let them meet up with Abirami, Avin, and Enydd eventually!